More Coffee, Please

The best part of School Board meetings is the hour before it begins.

If anyone hasn’t dropped by to see the Public Relations committee in action, they should do so. It’s rare to find such a positive group of people in action—and I was impressed with what I saw. Several men and women who were dedicated to finding ways to promote what was going on in the schools. If you see any of them, pat them on the back—they have the right idea.

Speaking of the School Board… I like the way it’s run, even if it does take some time to get from point A to point B. There are certainly elements that are still obstructionist and still nasty, but I like the commitment to following Robert’s Rules of Order. It might mean that nobody can leave to go to the bathroom before a vote, but at least everyone knows how the game is to be played.

I’m referencing the vote to reduce the board from its current 15 to 13. Surry’s vacant seat needs to be filled, and the plan was to have Swanzey fill it—giving them another seat. There are some on the board who wanted to shrink the numbers down, which would actually have given each of the representatives for Swanzey more of a vote. On the other hand, it also reduces the number of available board members to fill spots that need filling.

Six of one, half a dozen…

So there was a series of votes to decide what was to be done, and it went one way, and then it could have gone the other. At this point huge props to Jane Forsten, who voted for something she was against because she recognized that the only reason it was coming up for a vote at all was because of a procedural problem. She could have voted the other way, just to win, but she went with what was right. That was nice to see—She recognized the need to act with civility and courtesy. Well done.

But…

All of this was very nice. Still the bulk of the meeting was devoted to procedural squaring off, rather than focusing on education. The first half of the meeting was about votes, the last half about not having the numbers for the budget.

It really failed to inspire hope, or the feeling things are moving forward.

Tough times.

Tomorrow, we’re going to watch a new president be sworn in—and the press is comparing him to everybody from Lincoln to FDR to Kennedy. That’s fairly natural, I suppose, but certainly the state of the economy is enough to make everyone look to the second of those three.

The economy, combined with the additional tax burden Surry’s withdrawal placed on the district, means it’s no surprise that the school board asked to have a million dollars cut from the budget. It’s not a happy thing by any means, but it’s understandable. We cut budgets in tough times—in private homes, and as a state and district.

The regretful thing, however, is how hard we’re going to need to fight to get any of this back. Sooner or later, times will get better, sooner or later the pendulum will swing the other way. I just hope when it does we remember that the school district we’re creating, the school situation that will go in front of the voters is not the “optimal” one, not the way it needs to be to deliver an adequate education. It’s a marginal budget, a bare-bones budget, and when things are better, we ought to rush to restore what we’re cutting now.

Somehow I doubt that will happen.

Monadnock is taking a huge step forward in the coming weeks—it will make available, online to every parent and every student the grades a child receives in the course.

This is awesome.

I spent a hundred or so dollars of my own money a few years ago in order to get my hands on a grading program that would allow me to email parents copies of their child’s grades. At the end of every week, I would send a copy home. Response was excellent—parents liked knowing what was going on. They liked knowing when their child did, or did not, do the work.

About the only complaint I ever got was one quarter when, for various reasons, I only had two papers. I always “weighted” papers about 30% of a student’s quarterly grade—it seemed to make sense, for an English class, that if a student didn’t do the writing then there should be serious consequences. This generally worked very well, and I had no problems, until a combination of events meant that for one class, there were only two grades in that “30%” column.

I had a student who was doing “well enough” all quarter long—hovering with a solid 75%, a “C”. Mom and dad were happy, the kid was happy, and all was well.

Until the kid blew off that second paper—the one worth 15 points on the quarterly grade. One week before the quarter closed, the kid’s grade dropped from a C to an F. Boom.

Mom and dad got it—they understood what happened—but boy were they frustrated. They had a kid doing well, doing average work all quarter long, and then for one assignment the student failed. We went back and forth for awhile—English department policy at the time said late work was not to be accepted—and it was only because of the constant updates and the fact the kid was still passing for the year that they were mollified.

The experience was one of the reasons behind my hatred of “grades.” If I could go back and set-up a class today, I would do it around the competencies. “These are the x number of assignments you will do this year. All of them must be done, and be competent. Otherwise, no credit will be given.”¹ I’d send the letters home, I’d make sure parents understood, and then I would work as hard as I could to make sure every kid met the standard.

So I think having grades available will be a good thing—but I also expect that it will lead to some questions about the way grades are assigned, how a child earns—or doesn’t earn—credit. I’m not sure that failing an assignment should lead to failing a class, though I am quite certain that not showing competency in a standard is reason to not grant credit.

It’s a rather different way of looking at things.

Speaking of MRHS, I got to “guest lecture” this past week. Crime and Punishment² was moving into the mock-trial³ part of the year, and given my proximity to the building and familiarity with the unit, I was invited to introduce it.

It was fun, it went well, and I think the kids learned something—but boy, was it frustrating to only have 45 minutes. I was just getting warmed up when Ms. Carlson was in the back of the room waving her arms and pointing to her watch.

Periods. Are. Not. Enough. Time.

Let’s fix that. Please. Seriously, I’ll pay money if that’s what it takes.⁴

1 Pretty much the way we do things at MC² ↺

2 Which has nothing to do with Dostoevsky’s novel, just for the record. I wrote the curriculum for it, I didn’t pick the title. ↺

3 Probably the best and strongest unit of the class, actually. It’s the most experiential, the most project-oriented, and the one kids remember years later. I still get kids who shout out, “You saw dollar signs!” when they see me, quoting the closing arguments of one of my more creative lawyers-in-training. ↺

4 Admittedly, not a lot… ↺

Gregarious

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